CHRISTMAS MEMORIES

CHRISTMAS MEMORIES

I don't remember visions of sugar plums dancing through my head, but I do remember having trouble getting to sleep. We had a coal furnace while I was growing up, so my sister and I had to wait until Daddy had stoked up the furnace and warmed the house on Christmas morning before we could get up. Our parents were always generous even though money was very tight at times, and my sister and I received numerous Christmas gifts. Grandma and Pappy lived next door, and they also always had Christmas gifts for us.

One of my sharpest Christmas day memories is of a red scooter I received as a gift. I have no reason why that gift has always been so memorable, but I do remember riding it on our sidewalk on Christmas Day. I also remember the year I got an Erector Set. I had been letting my parents know of my desire for one for weeks, and one Sunday as I pointed out an advertisement in the Sunday paper, I saw a look pass between Mother and Daddy, so I was pretty sure an Erector Set would be under the tree on Christmas morning.

We sometimes got creative in our gift wrapping. One year my sister and I were wrapping a shirt for my dad, and we put buttons on the package and drew lines showing the collar. I was expressing to my sister how clever I thought it was when she reminded me that my dad was in the next room, so I should keep my voice down.

My sister worked at Newberry's store in Somerset, and one of her areas of responsibility was Christmas candy. We always had lots of candy for Christmas, mainly chocolate. We had peanut clusters, coconut clusters, Krackel, Mr. Goodbar, chocolate covered-cherries, and ribbon candy. I helped eat the coconut clusters first, and then we worked our way through the rest of the candy with the ribbon candy being finally consumed by about New Years.

One Christmas season I worked in the toy and sporting goods department of Newberry's. I enjoyed the job and was especially pleased one day as I sold a Polaroid camera to an older couple. They were unsure of their ability to properly use the camera, so I spent a good deal of time explaining its operation and assuring them that they could handle it. They bought the camera, and I was pretty pleased with myself; however, the next day they brought the camera back and explained to me that it was really just too heavy for them to carry around. My duties at Newberry's that Christmas were not limited to the toy and sporting goods department. It was the tradition of the time for the local churches to give the children in the church boxes of Christmas candy. Newberry's sold the candy to many of the churches, and that Christmas it became part of my job to help my sister get the individual boxes packed for all the churches.

Christmas afternoon we always visited lots of homes in Kantner to see how friends had decorated their trees and their homes. I always looked forward to visiting John Weible's house as he had an electric train with houses and other town accessories. The exciting part was the stream that he had running through the town. He actually used a pump to keep the water flowing. I was also interested in seeing all the presents my friends received.

My junior-high-school attempt at special outdoor decoration ended in failure, or should I say incompletion. I decided to spell “Merry Christmas” with pieces of a tree branch about an inch thick and cut to several inches in length. My idea was to paint them red, nail them to a white board, and put it on our front porch. Well, I couldn't hold the pieces of branch in one place long enough to get the nails through them. Every time I hit the nail with the hammer, the wood would slide away. Sooo, I finally gave up. Maybe I should have started before December 24.

When I went away to college, Grandma and Pappy bought me a portable typewriter for Christmas. I used that typewriter for years. It was an Olympia typewriter, was not electric, but it had a carrying case. To save space (I guess) the manufacturer didn't have the number “1” on the keyboard – the letter “l” was used instead.

Decorating the tree was a family affair, especially when it came to the icicles. Stringing them so that each individual icicle would drape from one branch to another was always a favorite trick of mine. It was received better than my other favorite trick – standing back and throwing icicles a handful at a time at the tree. One year my dad put the tree in the center of the living room. There was no hiding the always present “bare spot” on the tree, but it was fun to be sure the tree looked good from all sides. Everyone in town put wreaths in their windows. The more windows you had, the more wreaths you had to buy. I always enjoyed seeing all the wreaths.

If I were to continue my Christmas memories beyond my teenage years, this blog would get quite unwieldy because of the great joy, great times, and great memories of Christmas once the beautiful Norma Peden agreed to become Norma Croyle. You see, marriage and children don't add to Christmas and lifetime memories, they multiply them.